Business of the House

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Thursday 2nd March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I willingly join the hon. Gentleman, and I am sure the entire House, in expressing unreserved revulsion at and condemnation of the event he describes. It is, frankly, sickening to hear that human beings could be prepared to behave in such a fashion. I remember, from reading and seeing news reports just under a year ago, the sense of shock and genuine grief on the part of people in the south side of Glasgow. People from very different ethnic and religious heritages felt that they had lost a friend and a devoted champion of community life. That is how we should remember.

In a sense, the best tribute would be for people in Glasgow in particular, and all of us, to redouble our resolve to eradicate from our society this scourge of bigotry, whether it is based on racial, religious or any other grounds. I hope very much that the Pakistani high commission in London, which I think will have been equally appalled by these news reports, will have taken note of the words that the hon. Gentleman has spoken this morning.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

As a fellow Greater Manchester MP, it was my privilege to visit Sir Gerald in his constituency and see for myself the love of his constituents and the esteem in which they held him. He will be greatly missed in that constituency and by everybody in this House. Like everybody, I will miss Sir Gerald’s sartorial elegance. I remember one day, when he turned up in a particularly flamboyant number, my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) commented that several deckchairs in Blackpool must be missing their seats.

My last memory of Sir Gerald is his absolutely barnstorming speech from the Labour Back Benches against the forced academisation of schools. I was pleased—no doubt this was thanks to the efforts of Sir Gerald and many others—that the Government backtracked on those plans.

Another subject very close to Sir Gerald’s heart was the NHS. With that in mind, I would like to request an urgent debate on the activities of NHS Shared Business Services. When I worked for Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, NHS Shared Business Services put in a bid to run our payroll services. As trade union reps, we did a quick search of the internet and found a catalogue of woeful errors it had left in its wake from the NHS contracts it already held. May we have an urgent debate about why it was allowed to carry on performing NHS work?

[Mr Lidington]

The issue with NHS Shared Business Services was identified by the Department of Health and NHS England in March 2016. They immediately established an incident team, which is still working to try to resolve the situation. A team led by NHS England, including clinical experts, has now reviewed all 708,000 items of correspondence. Some 2,500 were identified as having potential risk of harm and required further investigation. Local GPs have now identified nearly 2,000 as having no patient harm. There remain 537 active cases, and they are still being followed up so that we can be absolutely certain there has been no harm to any patients. So far, there is no evidence to suggest actual harm. When the investigation is complete, I am sure that it would be reasonable for the relevant Health Minister to report to the House.